Happy Star Wars Week everyone! It is a week of Star Wars related puns, we have ‘May the Fourth be with you’, ‘the Revenge of the Fifth’ and even ‘the Dark Sixth’, an exciting week indeed. To celebrate I thought I would show the Star Wars Crawling Text App. The Crawling Text is as, if not more, iconic than any fight scene or line in any of the films. As soon as the music by John Williams starts you know the text is coming, that’s the power of it! Whether you like, or love, the films you cannot deny the power of the force…films, I meant films!

Crawl Text Creator

Getting Started:

If you search using a search engine you will find loads of various web sites but the one I found best was the official Star Wars Crawl Creator: http://play.starwars.com/html5/starwars_crawlcreator/ . To start with users click begin and are greeted with the iconic crawling text and John Williams music, at the end of this the screen halves and an editor appears. Once the episode number, title and crawling text has been edited users can view their work and even share it on social media or even a blog.

Long Time Ago

Quick Ways to use Crawling Text in Class:

  1. Brief Paragraph to Creative Writing: This could either be with the Teacher writing their own text and using it as a stimulus for writing in class. The other way it could be used is as a way for children to showcase their writing they have used, this could be either their whole paragraph or just a ‘blurb’ or even a scene setter for their story .Crawling Text
  1. Starter for a Class Film project: There is a lot of talk about the power of film, especially from Rob Smith, the creator of Literacy Shed, whom often highlights the benefits to literacy skills when children are exposed to films. As with the previous idea this would be such a powerful scene setter for a story or even just a nice trailer a few days before it is launched.Crawling Text 2
  1. Opening to Non- Fiction: I am currently doing some non-chronological reports based in space using some excellent videos I have found on the Literacy Shed (http://www.literacyshed.com/the-sci—fi-shed.html), a quick and easy EdTech tool like this is begging to be used to enhance the writing further.
  1. Persuasive writing: I have created the stimulus for a piece of persuasive writing which I will be doing with my class this week. I have written up the situation and possible issues and I am going to ask the class to create a counter argument.Editor
  1. Inference Skills: We have all been there reading through the crawling text studying what it is saying, how it is setting the scene and what this might make for the characters in the film. This is a quick and effective way to make this suit your class in guided reading or children could create them based on a text as part of their guided reading challenge.
  1. Engagement Tool: This is suited to any subject you see fit, but right off the mark it is easy to see that it lends itself to science and computing activities. Teachers could use it to introduce STEM, or STEAM, activities and it would be a thoroughly exciting way to introduce a maths focus.

Editor 2

If you’re interested in looking more literacy and film ideas as well as great ideas from Rob Smith check out: http://www.literacyshed.com/ 

Thanks for Reading!

Adam Chase (@_geekyteacher).